What Is Jeff Bezos Building Out There?

Blue Origin, the aerospace company led by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, is the most secretive of the big private space companies. But through accident reports, patent applications, and the trickle of information from the company itself, we can start to get a picture of just what the heck Bezos is building.

On August 24, a mysterious flight test in the west Texas desert ended in an explosion. On a huge parcel of land that Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos owns, his aerospace company, Blue Origin, tried to launch its latest creation. The rocket was traveling mach 1.2, or roughly 800 mph, when it experienced "flight instability" at 45,000 feet and the engines shut down.

Despite the fiery finale, Blue Origin's launch failure didn't appear in the national press until nine days later, when Forbes finally reported it. And that's typical for Bezos. Blue Origin is one of the several companies vying to be the future carrier for NASA astronauts headed to the International Space Station, but it's by far the most secretive—the organization is tight-lipped almost to the point of paranoia. The company wasn't announced until three years after being founded, and rarely says anything publicly. "It's simply the way they choose to conduct business," Blue Origin representative Bruce Hicks wrote in an email to Popular Mechanics; the company declined our attempt for an interview.

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Yet, Blue Origin may not be able to keep its activities under wraps for much longer, according to one aerospace executive who spoke to PM on the condition of anonymity. Blue Origin received $3.7 million in 2009 from NASA to develop a crew-carrying capsule, and another $22 million is on the way. "I get why they're so secretive. It's a competitive business environment. But we'll ultimately see them open up a little bit. They're taking public money, so they'll have to at some point."

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Not waiting around for that day to come, we dug around for information about Bezos' project. Here's what we found out about Blue Origin's creations—and how local law enforcement feels when you don't tell them you're going to launch a rocket.

Launch Gone Awry

Blue Origin is currently working on multiple projects. Bezos' astronaut-carrying capsule, which is in part supported by NASA funding, is slated to launch on existing rockets like the Atlas 5. It will be "biconic"—that is, a sort of hybrid between a capsule and a lifting body (where the craft's body itself creates lift). The company test-launched a cone-like vehicle called "New Shepard" in 2007. And Bezos is trying to perfect a rocket that can launch vertically, deploy a payload at the edge of space, and then fire its boosters again for landing on a set of pop-out stilts. As with New Shepard, Bezos is funding the development with his own money to maintain complete secrecy.

But it's hard not to draw some attention when a rocket explodes. The fiery spectacle in August certainly got the attention of residents of Van Horn, Texas. This town of about 2500 is 22 miles south of the launch site on Bezos' property. "[Bezos] is a substantial land owner. I'm sure if anything fell down, it landed on his property, nobody but his people got to see it," says Larry Simpson, publisher of the town's weekly Van Horn Advocate newspaper.

Blue Origin's secrecy also didn't earn it any friends with local law enforcement. Culberson County sheriff Oscar E. Carillo says no one from Blue Origin notified him about the launch, and that he wasn't happy about it. "This thing caught the dispatcher off guard. Someone called in who thought it was an airplane that exploded and was falling to the ground," Carillo says. "We were completely left out of the loop. Totally in the dark. And that's a problem for us."

Carillo and Simpson say that some Van Horn locals do work for Blue Origin, but none report on their activities because they have signed strict nondisclosure agreements. Even members of the volunteer fire department are sworn to secrecy. (Fire chief Eferan Hinojos never returned several messages we left.) So despite the accident, they didn't learn much of Blue Origin's rocket, though insiders told Simpson that the company is planning a "big powwow" in Kent, Wash., to discuss the launch failure, design adjustments, and future test flights.

Prescient Patents

The mysterious five-engine launch vehicle Blue Origin tried to get off the ground in August is now just hunks of scrap metal. But there is another place to seek hints into Bezos' plans: his patents. They suggest this rocket is just one iteration in a series of test vehicles.

Blue Origin's most interesting patent application may be the one that describes a rocket that launches from the ground and lands on a mobile, computer-controlled platform at sea. "No one has ever done a successful vertical takeoff and landing, but it's a worthy goal to go after. They're trying to make as reusable an orbital system as they can," our aerospace executive says.

After reaching the edge of space and deploying a payload, rocket bodies generally return to earth on a parachute to be reused in future launches. Some launch organizations just treat the rockets as trash and let them fall into the ocean. But Blue Origin plans to give its engines a second life during the descent and let them gently touch down on a launchpad.

After the rocket launches from the coast, it deploys its second stage, which would be the crew capsule or some other payload. But the first-stage booster is still laden with fuel. It will open an umbrella-like drag ring on its tail to reorient the vehicle for a vertical landing on the platform at sea. If the rocket's trajectory is off, it fires small corrective burns until its target is spot-on. Close to the launchpad, the boosters ignite for a gentle landing on the mobile platform. When it's done, Blue Origin could drag everything back to the coast for reconditioning.

Blue Origin isn't the only commercial space company stressing reusability to save money. At PM's Breakthrough Conference this week, Garrett Reisman, a two-time space shuttle astronaut who is now a senior engineer at SpaceX, said his company is working on firing rocket engines with a soft blast to try to land the rocket gently after its payload has been deployed—a similar idea to what Blue Origin appears to be working on. Our aerospace exec says Blue Origin's water-landing system adds another tricky element: "They're trying to do something hard. Any time you're actually pushing the boundary, you put yourself in an area where failure is likely. But I think it's something worthwhile. They've got lots of money and a good technical background. I think we're going to see them keep making progress."